A multi-institutional team of Boston-area researchers has discovered a chemical that works in mice to kill the rare but aggressive cells within breast cancers that have the ability to seed new tumors.
Low levels of a tiny RNA fragment in cells are associated with metastatic breast cancer in humans and increases the aggressive spread of breast cancer in mice, according to researchers at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
Understanding the role of EMT in adult stem cell creation may lead toward the development of healthy stem cells for regenerative medicine and provide drug targets for cancer.
Scientists have known for the last decade that a link exists between wound healing and cancer. Now scientists in the lab of Whitehead Institute Member Robert Weinberg have discovered the process by which tumors hijack normal wound-healing processes and use them for their own purposes.
Scientists know a great deal about how tumors originate and develop, but relatively little about how cancer manages to metastasize and invade distant tissues and organs.